Jhave Johnson's Mashup Machine

Over at Jacket2, Al Filreis gives us the scoop on Jhave Johnson's "prototype mashup machine that enables on overlay of poets’ sounds, with an option to turn on WEAVE, which senses silence (e.g. between lines or stanzas in a performance) and automatically intercuts from one short file segment to another, creating a flow of shifting voices." Johnson explains:

How does it work: MUPS can play multiple audio files (up to 32 streams) simultaneously. It can also WEAVE those files: by playing short segments of each voice until it encounters silence, then playing the next voice. MUPS offers users control over how the WEAVE occurs.

This is insanely fun! Right now we're streaming a little Brossard-Adam-Kyger-Lauterbach mashup. But Johnson lets us know that his mashup machine isn't only about fun and games:

Caveat: in spite of the playful tone of this intro, MUPS is intended as a digital augmentation in the study of prosody. As computational analysis advances it is feasible to foresee cultural heritage archives such as PennSound operating as sites where digital tools permit innovative explorations into the evolution of poetics. In MUPS, remote users can on one webpage, hear 1260 poems speak to each other and with each other. This is both fun and informative.

Now mash away!